Standardization

[David C. Plummer <DCP@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>]

    Date: Thu, 20 Mar 86 17:02 EST
    From: David.Dill@A.CS.CMU.EDU (C410DD60)

    To what extent can Common Lisp be changed in the process of becoming a 
    standard?

Let's call the thing published by Digital Press CLtL'84.  Let's also
assume that the typos and clarifications are also part of the language.

There have been some proposed extensions and some proposed changes to
CLtL'84.  Some of these are acknowledged bugs in the language, e.g.,
GET-SETF-METHOD needs to take an environment.  Others are not, e.g.,
should the TRUE and FALSE functions be put into the language?

I hope that the ANSI/ISO standardization is not a rubber stamping of
CLtL'84 but instead incorporates or addresses the ideas and proposals in
the years since then.  The result may drop some things that are in
CLtL'84 and add other things.  Yes, this means incompatible, and it
means that vendors have to say "We implement CLtL'84" or "We implement
ISO Lisp ye6.4.t9", but on the other hand, most vendors, and perhaps
this list, may agree that the ANSI/ISO version overrides CLtL'84.